Sacristy of Abbey church
The week epitomizes “ordinary time” by providing for us a full slate of “feria”, with only Saturday presenting us a commemoration, and only at the morning Mass. Perhaps we can think of it as the quiet before the greater silence, as the week leads us into March and our final few days of Ordinary Time and on to Ash Wednesday on March 5. Our Saturday commemoration is the 6th century’s David, patron of Wales. His legacy is remarkable, incuding the founding of numerous monasteries and the evangelization of Wales. He is said to have been the instructor of many others who carried the faith throughout the Biritish Isles and Ireland.
The week opens with a series of “ferial” days, not assigned particular commemorations. This quiet passage of “ordinary time” carries us along as we anticipate the introduction of the season of Lent, which the celestial beings have ordained to start on the late side this year, with Ash Wednesday not arriving until March 5. We nevertheless arrive at important feasts by the end of the week. Peter Damian, eleventh century Benedictine, theologian, and cardinal, was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1828. Dante revered him, giving him an important pedagogical role in Paradiso. The following day we find a unique feast, The Chair (or See) of St. Peter, which calls to mind the physical object as well as its theological significance. When we profess the church to be “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” we can associate each of these characteristics to Peter’s Chair. These all point to “the rock upon which” Christ builds His church.
Lourdes Grotto at Portsmouth
As we reflect on our Benedictine fellowship with the Manquehue Movement this week, it is edifying to discover that our week begins with the commemoration of Scholastica, the twin sister of Saint Benedict. She is noted as having been dedicated to the contemplative way of life he had mapped out and is considered the foundress of Benedictine nuns. We also commemorate Our Lady in two Masses this week, the regular Saturday weekday commemoration as well as that of Our Lady of Lourdes. We also commemorate Cyril and Methodius, ninth century biological brothers from Thessolonica, “Apostles to the Slavs” and important figures in monastic history. Dedicated to the “love of learning”, they are credited with developing the Glagolitic (or Slavic) alphabet, serving as intellectual leaders and educators.
Portsmouth Ordo, Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Sunday, February 9: Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Monday, February 10: Scholastica, virgin
Tuesday, February 11: Feria (Mass: Our Lady of Lourdes)
Wednesday, February 12: Feria
Thursday, February 13: Feria
Friday, February 14: Cyril (monk) & Methodius (bishop)
Saturday, February 15: Feria (Mass: Blessed Virgin Mary)
Lourdes Grotto at Portsmouth
Candles in the sanctuary for the Fest of the Presentation (2021)
We begin the week with the special coinciding of Sunday with the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. This “Candlemas” celebration is often associated with ordinations, and thus pertinent to the theme of vocations in this week’s issue. The collection of saints we commemorate this week then spans a wide spectrum, both in time and space. The 9th century’s Ansgar was known as “The Apostle of the North”, helping establish Christianity in northern Europe. This community also remembers in this connection Ansgar Nelson, monk of Portsmouth who also became Bishop of Stockholm. The church also remembers Agatha, 3rd century martyr saint of Sicily; Paul Miki & companions, 16th century martyrs of Japan; and Josephine Bakhita, 19th-20th century woman of Sudan, liberated from slavery and later a Canossian sister in Italy. In sum, we find vocations spanning the globe and crossing millennia, all in loving service to the One God.
The Presentation
February 2
“Forty days after Christmas, we celebrate the Lord who enters the Temple and comes to encounter his people. In the Christian East, this feast is called the “Feast of Encounter”: it is the encounter between God, who became a child to bring newness to our world, and an expectant humanity, represented by the elderly man and woman in the Temple. In the Temple, there is also an encounter between two couples: the young Mary and Joseph, and the elderly Simeon and Anna. The old receive from the young, while the young draw upon the old. In the Temple, Mary and Joseph find the roots of their people. This is important because God’s promise does not come to fulfillment merely in individuals, once for all, but within a community and throughout history.” (Pope Francis, 2018 Presentation homily)
Procession for Saint Agatha in Catania, Sicily
February 5
From February 3-5, Catania, in Sicily, is filled with pilgrims and devotees of its great procession and festival for Saint Agatha, one of the largest such gatherings in Italy. This beautiful early Roman saint, consecrated to God in virginity, is said to have been martyred after the unrequited advances of the Roman governor Quintanus, who had her imprisoned, assaulted, and tortured, including the removal of her breasts, an account leading to her present-day patronage of breast cancer. She has long been one of the most venerated of the early martyrs, famously eulogized in a poem by Pope Damasus. Her place in the Roman canon of saints was solidified by our own Gregory the Great, who had a great devotion to her.
February 6
The city of Nagasaki has long been important to Catholicism. An important point in this history was the martyrdom of Paul Miki on February 5, 1597: Miki was a native Japanese convert who joined the Jesuits. During his crucifixion, he famously preached to those around him, noting that he could not be accused of being a foreign presence: “I am a true Japanese. The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ.” Missionaries returning to Japan in the late 19th century found no visible indication of Christian faith, after rigorous and ongoing persecutions. However, thousands in the Nagasaki area had in fact secretly retained their faith in secret. Miki and twenty-five others were canonized in 1862 by Pius IX.
February 8
From "Spe Salvi," encyclical letter of Pope benedict XVI: "The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. ... when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter's lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had 'redeemed' her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody."
February 10
Scholastica was the twin sister of Saint Benedict, and one finds their shared grave at the High Altar of the cathedral at Monte Cassino. That abbey’s website states that the two, “were never separated in spirit during their life nor are their bodies separated in their death.” Benedictine tradition holds that Scholastica established a hermitage about five miles from Monte Cassino which is considered to be the first “Benedictine” convent. A most famous story of the two is of Scholastica wanting Benedict to remain with her, perhaps aware that her death was imminent, and upon his refusal praying to God. A terrible storm then arose, forcing Benedict to stay. Asked what she had done, she replied to her brother: “I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen.” While historical support for stories of Benedict and Scholastica is limited, their legacy is strong, and Scholastic is considered the foundress of female Benedictines and patroness of all nuns.
Grotto on the Portsmouth Abbey campus
February 11
The designation of this feast day to Our Lady, in her apparition at Lourdes, is one of a group of memorials dedicated to Our Lady with relation to her appearances. Among them are Fatima, Loreto, Guadeloupe, and Mount Carmel, with additional more locally celebrated days. The liturgical feast of Our Lady of Lourdes was established by Pope Leo XIII, and first granted to the Diocese of Tarbes in the year 1890. Less than twenty years later (1907), his successor, Pope St. Pius X proclaimed that it be observed universally. On the centenary of the apparitions to Bernadette, Pope Pius XII wrote: “Every Christian land is a Marian land; there is not a nation redeemed in the blood of Christ which does not glory in proclaiming Mary its Mother and Patroness.” We see this reflected in the United States, whose patroness is the Mary, the Immaculate Conception, a title declared by Mary to Bernadette. We also see this devotion reflected in our own Lourdes grotto on campus.
February 14
This day to commemorate the historically very significant Cyril and Methodius has the unfortunate fate of coinciding with the date associated with the less historical but more romantically appealing Valentine. Known as “The Apostles to the Slavs,” these ninth-century Byzantine scholars are credited with developing the earliest Slavic alphabet. The two were well-educated and well-connected politically, combining skills of scholarship and political savvy in negotiating the difficult tensions of their times. Among their many other duties and accomplishments, Methodius served as an abbot, Cyril a professor of philosophy.
February 21
Winning the approval of Dante Alighieri, 11th century Benedictine and cardinal, Peter Damian, guides him through the sphere of Saturn in Paradiso. Peter Damian was among those pious and dedicated monastics who found themselves called to more active leadership roles in the church. Damian was cautious towards the assumed powers of the human intellect, finding philosophy often overstepping its limitations – yet his theological insights led him to be proclaimed a Doctor of the Church. Pope Benedict XVI called him, “one of the most significant figures of the 11th century…, a monk, a lover of solitude and at the same time a fearless man of the Church, committed personally to the task of reform, initiated by the Popes of the time.” (General Audience, 2009) Benedict emphasizes that the Hermitage at Fonte Avellana, to which Damian withdrew, was dedicated to the Holy Cross, “and the Cross was the Christian mystery that was to fascinate Peter Damian more than all the others. ‘Those who do not love the Cross of Christ do not love Christ,’ he said (Sermo XVIII, 11, p. 117).”
February 22
The “Chair of Saint Peter” is both physical object and theological doctrine. In both senses, the chair is centered in St. Peter’s Basilica, which is both the symbol of the magisterial authority of the See, and the location of a now highly ornamented throne. The Catholic Encyclopedia: “During the Middle Ages it was customary to exhibit [the chair] yearly to the faithful; the newly-elected pope was also solemnly enthroned on this venerable chair. . . .” The more recent version is the work of the quintessential Roman master Bernini. Concerning the “theological” chair, Pope Benedict XVI: “This is a very ancient tradition, proven to have existed in Rome since the fourth century. On it we give thanks to God for the mission he entrusted to the Apostle Peter and his Successors. ‘Cathedra’ literally means the established seat of the Bishop, placed in the mother church of a diocese which for this reason is known as a ‘cathedral’; it is the symbol of the Bishop’s authority and in particular, of his ‘magisterium’, that is, the evangelical teaching which, as a successor of the Apostles, he is called to safeguard and to transmit to the Christian Community."
February 23
Polycarp is considered one of the three great “Apostolic Fathers,” together with Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch. Irenaeus heard him speak, and he is counted as a disciple of John the Apostle, providing a historic link to the apostles. He disputed the reductive Christology of Marcion. And if St. Paul is considered foundational in articulating the faith, Polycarp was crucial in the preservation of the orthodoxy articulated by Paul, against his cooption by early Gnosticism. The “Martyrdom of Polycarp” provides the oldest authentic account of an early Christian’s martyrdom.